Re: Defending monosexuals (was: YAEPT: uu/ii )

That email was more or less tongue-in-cheek. I thought it was quite a nifty
(hence my categorising it as "funny") way of Mark's to encompass both homo-
and heterosexuals with the word, punning on "bi-". In fact, I hadn't known
that hermaphrodites were once called "bisexuals". No offence/ignorance meant
-- apologies.
Of course, we also vaguely know why "bisexual" won out over
"amphoterosexual" ultimately, given the number of syllables in each and the
general laziness of humans.

Eugene

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 2:20 AM, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:

> Eugene Oh wrote:
>
>> "Monosexuals" is a funny word!
>>
>
> I do not see why "monosexual" is any more or less funny than "bisexual".
> The latter was, when I was young, and adjective meaning 'having both male &
> female sex organs', i.e. hermaphrodite. Over the last half century the word
> has shifted to mean 'attracted sexually to both sexes.'
>
> On the analogy of homosexual & heterosexual one would've expected
> 'attracted sexually to both sexes' to be *amphoterosexual, but it ain't; and
> shifts in meaning happen all the time in living languages,
>
>  The imaginative boundaries for that are
>> practically non-existent.
>>
> No more, meseems, that for 'bisexual' if one wants to be imaginative.
>
>  Is a monosexual someone who...
>>
>> (a) Has only one sex as opposed to the rest of the world, which has two or
>> more?
>>
>
> ?? Surely most people in this world have only one sex, either male or
> female. Hermaphrodites, i.e. bisexuals in the older meaning, are a minority.
> Most of us on this list, I guess, are monosexual, i.e. have only one sex, as
> opposed to bisexual in the sense of 'having both male & female sex organs'.
>
>  (b) Has sex once?
>>
>
> Yeah, yeah - kinda like a bisexual has sex only twice!
>
> [snip]
>
>> On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 12:21 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I found that a tad offensive... but maybe it's just me.
>>>>
>>> I'm sure Roger meant nothing by it, but yeah, one reads an implication
>>> that bisexuals are somehow more likely than monosexuals to carry
>>> viruses.  Which is indeed an offensive assertion...
>>>
>>
> Surely Mark's coinage of monosexual is quite logical in view of the
> contemporary meaning of 'bisexual'. It's also IMO very neat as it
> encompasses both heterosexual and homosexuals.
>
> FWIW my original remarks about bi and bii were simply making fun of the not
> uncommon pseudo-Latin plurals of _virus_, thus:
> bus ~ bi, on the analogy of virus ~ viri
> bus ~ bii, on the analogy of virus ~ virii
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> Frustra fit per plura quod potest
> fieri per pauciora.
> [William of Ockham]
>

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